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Once in a great while, the planets align and good things happen. In this case, a racing team needed some prerace vehicle-prep time-and had rented a track near our Los Angeles office-and Motor Trend had a production version of the same car the team races. Why not run the two together for this magazine story and a “Motor Trend Television” show? Serendipity? Not exactly.

Last year we were invited to race Hyundai (of Canada) Motorsports’ moderately successful, outgoing four-cylinder Tiburon race car in what was then the Motorola Cup Series. Unfortunate scheduling put an end to that. This year, the racing series has a new name (Grand-Am Cup, Street Stock Series), and Hyundai has four brand-new V-6 Tiburon race cars. Can you feel the astronomy at work? While we haven’t been invited to race one yet, they offered to let us test one of them alongside our production car, which needed “First Test” numbers anyway. We’ve already published a “First Drive” on the all-new-for-’03 Tiburon GT (March ’02), so we won’t repeat all the changes to the car. Suffice to say, just about everything you can imagine is brand new-only the name remains.

We loaded up the test gear and drove our Rally Red Tiburon GT V6 coupe to Buttonwillow Raceway Park where we met up with Team Key Motorsport owner/manager Steve Djelebian. Steve is the technical partner of Hyundai Motorsports and is responsible for its operation, along with Marc Craig who also puts in some driving himself. Greeting us with open arms, Djelebian pronounced the Number 6 car ours for the day: to test, photograph, videotape, and drive as hard as we dared-and drive we did. Our mission was to produce our usual battery of data, as we would with any production car, but we’d finish the day lapping both the production and race models back to back for comparison purposes.

Test gear humming, we warmed up the race-car’s slick tires and laid down the quickest 0-60-mph time we’ve ever recorded for a front-drive car at 5.7 sec. Granted, this Tiburon weighs some 473 lb less than the production version, but even with a clutch that we weren’t operating properly, this was just the first of many surprises. Next up, we ran the production Tiburon GT V6 down the strip and it, too, made an impressive pass. Glancing at our records, its 7.0-sec time falls between those of the much-admired Acura RSX Type-S (6.7) and the oh-so-popular Toyota Celica GT-S at 7.3 sec.

Because a front-drive car tends to overwhelm its front tires before getting too dicey, slaloming is usually more an exercise in rhythm than in sheer concentration-unless of course, it’s wearing racing slicks. After just a few passes, the race-car’s tires approached their operating temperature, and the speeds began to climb, and climb some more. While only a handful of RWD cars have ever negotiated the maniacal 600-ft slither at over 70-mph, fewer still have gone faster than the FWD Tiburon Grand-Am at 71.4 mph: ’97 Viper GTS (73.6), ’99 Viper GTS-R (72.4), ’97 Ferrari F355 (72.1). Because the race car must be built from its production-car donor, the stock GT V6 also returns exceptional slalom numbers. Again splitting the difference between the RSX Type-S (63.9 mph) and Celica GT-S (66.3 mph), the all-new Tiburon posts a 65.9-mph best.

While neither the race car nor the street version was equipped with ABS (part of a reasonably priced $2000 package including a power sunroof), they both offered commendable pedal feel and respectable stopping distances. The red car stopped in just 126 ft, and the white No. 6 car in 128. There’s an interesting thing about the race cars, however. As with its tires, the brakes are designed to operate at higher (racing) temperatures than a street car’s, and our wimpy 60-0-mph braking test wasn’t enough to make the racing Ferodo brake pads really work. It wasn’t until we began to make hot laps on the road course that they began to function properly.

Since we’d previously been to Buttonwillow Raceway with a group of three heavy-hitting sports cars (Aug. ’01), we had baseline lap times to compare the Tiburon cars against. From “slowest” to quickest, the lap times of our 1.1-mile course for a 250-hp Porsche Boxster S, a 333-hp BMW M3 coupe and a 385-hp Chevy Corvette Z06 were 1:01.62, 1:00.50, and 0:59.50, respectively. How would the Tiburon twins do?

First up was the production car. Having a pretty good idea of its limits from the instrumented testing, we ran four and a half laps before the Tiburon’s Michelin Pilot Sport tires began to go “greezy.” The best lap was 1:04.12. We were amazed at how flat the car cornered, the ease with which it could be coaxed to rotate if understeering, and how well its brakes withstood a race pace. At just 2.5 sec behind a Boxster S, it was impressive.

Next out on the course was the race car. Initially, we were disappointed because it didn’t perform significantly better than the production version. Then everything started to change. Remember, race cars don’t wake up until a few laps around the track bring everything up to temperature. Between laps three and four, the car was transformed and shaved off an astounding 5 sec, down to a 0:58.64 lap. The best was yet to come, however, and on lap seven, a 0:57.78 ticked off on our way to consistent high-57-sec lapping. The FWD, underdog, 2.7L/240-hp V-6 Tiburon race car outpaced the mighty RWD, 5.7L/385-hp V-8 Corvette Z06 by 1.7 sec.

Despite 12 consecutive laps, the hot Hyundai remained steadfastly glued to the tarmac, its brakes continued to improve, and it never felt “used up.” In fact, its Isaac data-acquisition system showed the race car had pulled sustained 1.2 lateral g-loads in a particular sweeping corner, with spikes at 1.4 g. Once its tires and brakes were heated, it also made over 1.0 g in both acceleration and braking loads.

After learning more about the track and the Tiburon’s (race) behavior, we went back to the production car whose tires had had a chance to recompose themselves. Sure enough, two laps into session two, the $19,000 production car’s best lap improved to a 1:03.18, or just 1.5 sec off the $57,000 Porsche. Astounding.

At day’s end, we reluctantly handed the race car back to Djelebian, hopped in our Tiburon GT V6 and drove home. It took several repetitions of the Buttonwillow story for it all to sink in. It’s obvious the new Tiburon has potential, but only now do we see how much. If there isn’t already an aftermarket company offering go-faster, look-cooler stuff for the ’03 Tiburon, there should be. And those who drive an RSX, Civic Si, Celica GT-S, or SVT Focus should be watching their mirrors.

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2003 Hyundai Tiburon News and Reviews

Once in a great while, the planets align and good things happen. In this case, a racing team needed some prerace vehicle-prep time-and had rented a track near our Los Angeles office-and Motor Trend had a production version of the same car the team races. Why not run the two together for this magazine story and a "Motor Trend Television"…

Interesting news: Hyundai-that Korean purveyor of previously entry-level, somewhat marginal-quality products-has been doing its homework and upping its game. The latest evidence is a new sporty coupe that's not only a surprisingly nice car, but actually fun to drive. Hyundai's all-new '03 Tiburon is a worthy replacement for the previous cramped and buzzy version. Highlights include a wider, stronger chassis,…